What is a "thread" (really)?

Question

A thread is an execution context, which is all the information a CPU needs to execute a stream of instructions.

Suppose you're reading a book, and you want to take a break right now, but you want to be able to come back and resume reading from the exact point where you stopped. One way to achieve that is by jotting down the page number, line number, and word number. So your execution context for reading a book is these 3 numbers.

If you have a roommate, and she's using the same technique, she can take the book while you're not using it, and resume reading from where she stopped. Then you can take it back, and resume it from where you were.

Threads work in the same way. A CPU is giving you the illusion that it's doing multiple computations at the same time. It does that by spending a bit of time on each computation. It can do that because it has an execution context for each computation. Just like you can share a book with your friend, many tasks can share a CPU.

On a more technical level, an execution context (therefore a thread) consists of the values of the CPU's registers.

Last: threads are different from processes. A thread is a context of execution, while a process is a bunch of resources associated with a computation. A process can have one or many threads.

Clarification: the resources associated with a process include memory pages (all the threads in a process have the same view of the memory), file descriptors (e.g., open sockets), and security credentials (e.g., the ID of the user who started the process).

A thread is an independent set of values for the processor registers (for a single core). Since this includes the Instruction Pointer (aka Program Counter), it controls what executes in what order. It also includes the Stack Pointer, which had better point to a unique area of memory for each thread or else they will interfere with each other.

Threads are the software unit affected by control flow (function call, loop, goto), because those instructions operate on the Instruction Pointer, and that belongs to a particular thread. Threads are often scheduled according to some prioritization scheme (although it's possible to design a system with one thread per processor core, in which case every thread is always running and no scheduling is needed).

In fact the value of the Instruction Pointer and the instruction stored at that location is sufficient to determine a new value for the Instruction Pointer. For most instructions, this simply advances the IP by the size of the instruction, but control flow instructions change the IP in other, predictable ways. The sequence of values the IP takes on forms a path of execution weaving through the program code, giving rise to the name "thread".

In order to define a thread formally, we must first understand the boundaries of where a thread operates.

A computer program becomes a process when it is loaded from some store into the computer's memory and begins execution. A process can be executed by a processor or a set of processors. A process description in memory contains vital information such as the program counter which keeps track of the current position in the program (i.e. which instruction is currently being executed), registers, variable stores, file handles, signals, and so forth.

A thread is a sequence of such instructions within a program that can be executed independently of other code. The figure shows the concept:

Threads are within the same process address space, thus, much of the information present in the memory description of the process can be shared across threads.

Some information cannot be replicated, such as the stack (stack pointer to a different memory area per thread), registers and thread-specific data. This information suffices to allow threads to be scheduled independently of the program's main thread and possibly one or more other threads within the program.

Explicit operating system support is required to run multithreaded programs. Fortunately, most modern operating systems support threads such as Linux (via NPTL), BSD variants, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. Operating systems may use different mechanisms to implement multithreading support.

Here, you can find more information about the topic. That was also my information-source.

Let me just add a sentence coming from Introduction to Embedded System by Edward Lee and Seshia:

Threads are imperative programs that run concurrently and share a memory space. They can access each others’ variables. Many practitioners in the field use the term “threads” more narrowly to refer to particular ways of constructing programs that share memory, [others] to broadly refer to any mechanism where imperative programs run concurrently and share memory. In this broad sense, threads exist in the form of interrupts on almost all microprocessors, even without any operating system at all (bare iron).

Processes are like two people using two different computers, who use the network to share data when necessary. Threads are like two people using the same computer, who don't have to share data explicitly but must carefully take turns.

Conceptually, threads are just multiple worker bees buzzing around in the same address space. Each thread has its own stack, its own program counter, etc., but all threads in a process share the same memory. Imagine two programs running at the same time, but they both can access the same objects.

Contrast this with processes. Processes each have their own address space, meaning a pointer in one process cannot be used to refer to an object in another (unless you use shared memory).

I guess the key things to understand are:

• Both processes and threads can "run at the same time".
• Processes do not share memory (by default), but threads share all of their memory with other threads in the same process.
• Each thread in a process has its own stack and its own instruction pointer.

I am going to use a lot of text from the book Operating Systems Concepts by ABRAHAM SILBERSCHATZ, PETER BAER GALVIN and GREG GAGNE along with my own understanding of things.

Process

Any application resides in the computer in the form of text (or code).

We emphasize that a program by itself is not a process. A program is a passive entity, such as a file containing a list of instructions stored on disk (often called an executable file).

When we start an application, we create an instance of execution. This instance of execution is called a process. EDIT:(As per my interpretation, analogous to a class and an instance of a class, the instance of a class being a process. )

An example of processes is that of Google Chrome. When we start Google Chrome, 3 processes are spawned:

• The browser process is responsible for managing the user interface as well as disk and network I/O. A new browser process is created when Chrome is started. Only one browser process is created.

• Renderer processes contain logic for rendering web pages. Thus, they contain the logic for handling HTML, Javascript, images, and so forth. As a general rule, a new renderer process is created for each website opened in a new tab, and so several renderer processes may be active at the same time.

• A plug-in process is created for each type of plug-in (such as Flash or QuickTime) in use. Plug-in processes contain the code for the plug-in as well as additional code that enables the plug-in to communicate with associated renderer processes and the browser process.

Thread

To answer this I think you should first know what a processor is. A Processor is the piece of hardware that actually performs the computations. EDIT: (Computations like adding two numbers, sorting an array, basically executing the code that has been written)

Now moving on to the definition of a thread.

A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization; it comprises a thread ID, a program counter, a register set, and a stack.

EDIT: Definition of a thread from intel's website:

A Thread, or thread of execution, is a software term for the basic ordered sequence of instructions that can be passed through or processed by a single CPU core.

So, if the Renderer process from the Chrome application sorts an array of numbers, the sorting will take place on a thread/thread of execution. (The grammar regarding threads seems confusing to me)

My Interpretation of Things

A process is an execution instance. Threads are the actual workers that perform the computations via CPU access. When there are multiple threads running for a process, the process provides common memory.

EDIT: Other Information that I found useful to give more context

All modern day computer have more than one threads. The number of threads in a computer depends on the number of cores in a computer.

Concurrent Computing:

From Wikipedia:

Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which several computations are executed during overlapping time periods—concurrently—instead of sequentially (one completing before the next starts). This is a property of a system—this may be an individual program, a computer, or a network—and there is a separate execution point or "thread of control" for each computation ("process").

So, I could write a program which calculates the sum of 4 numbers:

(1 + 3) + (4 + 5)

In the program to compute this sum (which will be one process running on a thread of execution) I can fork another process which can run on a different thread to compute (4 + 5) and return the result to the original process, while the original process calculates the sum of (1 + 3).

Unfortunately, threads do exist. A thread is something tangible. You can kill one, and the others will still be running. You can spawn new threads.... although each thread is not it's own process, they are running separately inside the process. On multi-core machines, 2 threads could run at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_multithreading

http://www.intel.com/intelpress/samples/mcp_samplech01.pdf